[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is a truism
that there is no cruelty so devilish as that of the black-coated doctrinaire. But I could not have believed that any decent- man could have expressed " a more than sympathetic admiration " for the Cheka-Ogpu, or re- ferred to Djerjhinsky as " the beloved altruist." The butcher's bill of this gentle saint and his henchmen was published, from Soviet sources, in 1922. " Bishops 28 ; priests 1,215 [the number of martyrs is now over 8,000] ; professors and teachers 6,675 ; doctors 8,800 ; army officers 54,000 ; soldiers 260,000 ; police officers 10,000 ; con- stabulary 48,500 ; landowners 12,950 ; intelligentsia and middle-class 355,350; peasants 815,100. Total 1,572,718." The truth about the " famine " which cost the lives of from four to six million peasants in 1934 is known at our Embassy at Moscow. If I believed that the religion of Messrs. Strachey, Needham and Reade was Christianity, I should say dcrasez l'infdme with more energy than Voltaire ever did; but hardly anyone outside England is muddle-headed enough to suppose that " dialectical materialism " (the Marxist creed) is com- patible with Christianity or any other religion. No Roman Catholic is allowed to be a Communist.—Yours, &c., Brightwell Manor, Wallingford. W. R. INGE.
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